NEWS FROM KATHY AND PHIL IN OAXACA
June-July, 2012
Dear Friends and Family,
As many of you know, we
recently left behind the hillsides and fields of Yucuyoco for a time to
celebrate the wedding of our oldest son, Chris, and his love, Lisa, in New
Mexico, with all the family gathered from near and far, and of course to enjoy
the five grandchildren. While there we did a few talks about Yucuyoco and how
it has stimulated our imagination as to what is to be done in the crises of our
day. Yet we found a certain discouragement and disillusion among friends and
family there that we don’t feel back here in the rarified atmosphere of change
in Mexico and Latin America. What to do?
A few weeks ago an indigenous friend reviewing the ecological, economic
and social crises of today proclaimed, “They’ve had their turn and have created
a disaster. Now it’s our turn!” Perhaps the first thing we need to do is
recognize and proclaim that this time in the history of the human family is
“our” time. It is the time of indigenous communities and of all of us who
believe that the purpose of life is not to consume but rather to create harmony
within the human community and the larger community of life on the Mother
Earth. It is the time of those of us who will not accept a future of resource
wars and ecological disaster for our children and grandchildren.
 |
| Time Honored Method of Threshing Local Heritage Wheat - It Works! |
In the face of
irrational growth in resource use that has brought us to the limits of the only
planet we have – and to income gaps that have become totally
socially unsustainable, we proclaim a
way to a hopeful future for the planet. And we need to proclaim this as loudly
as some profess their allegiance to the ecologically and economically outdated
vision of free markets, consumerism, radical individualism and the injustice,
racism and war that it breeds.
We cannot be intimidated by
those who claim that there is no other way and maintain that our ideas are
impractical. Certainly, we have learned from indigenous communities that are
putting our values into practice in Latin America, that there is another way.
The social chaos, bankruptcies, and recessions of today proclaim that it is the
current model that is impractical. And when our analyses begin to scratch under
the surface of what is supposedly the only model, we find such anomalies as a
U.S. food system that requires 10 calories of energy to get one calorie of food
on the table, while in Yucuyoco we can get 3 to 7 calories of food on our
tables for one calorie of energy input!
If we can’t have immediate
impact on national politics, at least local governments and civic groups can
put into practice the new agenda:
·
Reduce energy use
(look what an opportunity our food system presents)
·
Produce locally
·
Decommodify our
production systems and our households by using fewer products that we need to
buy
·
Rezone for local
food production (the city of Havana, Cuba produces 40% of its vegetables in
urban garden areas and lands that surround cities, zoned for organic food
production)
·
Reassert
community with concepts that can reduce our need to depend on the cash economy,
with mutual aid (gueza), community work projects (tequio), and a careful and
responsible use of all the resources that make up our communities’ commons
·
Recognize and
enforce the rights of our Mother Earth.
We have a platform to put
into practice in the North as well as in Yucuyoco!
Here are some of the projects
your donations have helped support in the Mixteca Alta during this past year:
v
Piped Water Project
for the Village – we are close to finishing this effort now. The system will pipe water from our
mountain spring, by pumping it up to a level above the highest house, then
piping it now by gravity to every house in the village. This has taken an enormous amount of
work, with the whole village turning out to do the digging of all the ditches,
laying of pipes, covering them, etc.
v
Children’s Preventive
Health Education - our Mixtec version of the international Child to Child (Niño
a Niño program) of working in village groups with a local guide to empower
children and teenagers to create and work on projects to improve community
health and wellness and protect the environment.
v
Children’s Mobile
Library – promoting reading skills and enjoyment by providing access to
literature for children in remote rural villages.
v
Sustainable
Farming: Biological Pest Control – production of organic fertilizers and
biological control of the Japanese beetle larva (very destructive to corn).
v
Promotion of
Native Seeds and Agricultural Technologies – the Museum of the Milpa and
experiments with family seed reserves.
v
Nonviolent
Conflict Resolution – Enabling training workshops for leaders in the theory,
background, and practice of methods for nonviolent, peaceful change.
v
Aid to Indigenous
Villages – in times of scarcity and natural disaster, such as crop failure,
this effort gives emergency support for food and basic necessities.
We
thank you for your letters, your prayers, and your donations, which continue to
help make this work possible.
Our principle aim for these letters is to share our view from this
little corner of the earth. But if
you do wish to contribute to this work, you can send a tax-deductible donation
to:
Instituto Paz en
las Americas, 2645 Mountain View Rd., Silver City, NM 88061.
Please write on the
memo of the check: “for
Dahl-Bredine projects”.
Many thanks, and we always
love hearing from you.
Please send us your email address, if we don’t have
it! We will continue to
postal-mail to those we know prefer it.
Peace and Blessings to you
all,
Phil and Kathy
Oaxaca mailing address:
Kathy & Phil
Dahl-Bredine, Apdo. 29, Nochixtlán, Oaxaca, 69600, Mexico
Tel. 52-951-440-8951, kpdbmx@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment